We had some good friends over tonight, drinking Merlot, eating Shirley's pizza, talking about life.  Second time this week.  Doesn't get much better than that.

Sailing Anarchy: Is there any stopping Big Mac?  Ellen MacArthur continues her assault on the solo around-the-world record, she's currently halfway there and two days ahead of schedule.  Nice boat :) 

It seems a bit petty to post pictures of flooding in Los Angeles after what's happened in the Indian Ocean, but we are having rain.  I guess it's a good thing, we need the water, and it sure makes it feel like winter.  Whew.  [ via blogging.la ] 

Amazon's relief counter for tsunami aid is now at $7M.  That's from over 100,000 individual donations.  Amazing.  Even more amazing; load that page, and then click refresh a few times.  You can watch people donating in realtime; something like 10 donations per second, right now...  The estimated death toll keeps rising, it is now over 110,000. 

Merlin Mann: A Year of Getting Things Done, Part I.  "Far and away, my best takeaway has been the idea of the next action.  Leaning to identify the absolute next physical action that will keep a project moving has been a godsend to the way I think about, plan, and execute my work."  Great introspection about productivity.  [ via Cory Doctorow ] 

Check out this awesome gallery of microscopic images!  Just beautiful. 

Hack-a-day: How to record on your iPod (for free).  Of possible interest to those who want to record on their iPod.  Personally I use it as an output-only device.  I like the directions: 1) install podzilla on your iPod, 2) boot into Linux.  Yep, you got that right, boot into Linux on your iPod.  Whew. 

Chris Anderson, editor of Wired Magazine and author of the long tail, wonders is DRM evil?  In response to Cory Doctorow's comments that Wired should be harder on DRM.  And then Cory responds back.  So what do you think, is DRM evil?  I link, you decide. 

Want my opinion?  Of course you do.  Well I think it doesn't matter.  DRM doesn't work, period.  So arguing about whether it is good or bad or somewhere in between is irrelevant.  The digital genie is out of the bottle.